


If Red is for Hell

by polytropic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, canon character death (permanent and not), canon depressing feels and attempts to make people cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polytropic/pseuds/polytropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is having absolutely no trouble adjusting to being an Alpha. None at all. Everything's totally fine! Right up until it isn't. </p><p>(I'm having a bad day so I decided everyone else should too. And then I realized: no one has worse days than Derek Hale.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Red is for Hell

Derek thought being an Alpha would involve more anger.

It had for Laura. She'd gotten the eyes and the strength and the change all as one package, the first full moon after the fire, and for weeks afterwards she'd just...broken things. The door, again and again, slamming behind her going in or out. The table, from too many sharp, angry fists. Trees, at first because they were safe targets, then because she just liked it.

It had taken her a couple of months to work it all out, and then she'd been better. Free. Derek had resented her for that for a while.

Derek's change doesn't happen like that. He gets the eyes first, the strength slowly, in bits and pieces, and the change hasn't even fully happened for him yet. And maybe it's just because there's no room for any more rage inside of him, but he isn't lashing out at trees or screaming at the sky. He feels _great_.

Derek Hale, baby of the pack, is handling his Alpha transformation like a fucking boss. It'd be great if there was anyone left to see it.

He bites people, because that's what you do when you're a new Alpha, and because he loves how it makes him fly even higher. He feels successful. He feels powerful. And for the first time in so long, all of the roiling nauseated guilt is drowned out by triumph. She is dead, and he is alive. He wins.

And then things start going wrong. Derek's Bite, like all things he gives freely and blindly, is rejected in ways worse than he could possibly imagine. Derek tells everyone who will listen that it's something wrong inside of Lydia, and later Jackson, that makes them this way: that their personality is cold and vicious. He thinks that they can probably all smell the desperation coming off of him in waves, for someone to please give him a sign that it isn't him. That he doesn't warp and marr everything he touches. His shiny new Alpha strength freezes in paralyzed muscles and he feels like he's chasing his tail, running in circles while bodies pile up.

Isaac looks at him like he's trying to give Derek the benefit of the doubt but it's getting harder every day. Erica and Boyd just look betrayed. This isn't the way it was supposed to be for them. Derek wants to scream that he _knows_ that, do they think _he_ wanted it like this?! But that's not what Alphas do.

Alphas fight. Derek fights and loses. Alphas lead. Derek's Betas leave. Alphas protect their land. Gerard Argent is back in Beacon Hills, trailing his rotting, decaying smell all over Derek's town. And, as Deaton helpfully reminds him, Alphas trust. Derek wants to say that he tried, so that he can feel righteously betrayed by Scott, but he knows that's a lie. He didn't try. He can't even pretend he wanted to. He wanted to want to, as if that counts for anything.

When Peter comes back it's like a sick joke. Because Derek's so used to squashing the wailing voice in his head that keeps sobbing _I want my mom, I want my dad, I want them back so they can make everything better_. Instead he gets Peter. And Peter, like he heard Derek's prayers, proceeds to take charge.

Derek has to kill a little boy. Who is trying so hard in his last moments to be grown up. _You did good, Jackson,_ Derek wants to tell him. _You tried so hard. You were an arrogant little asshole who wore douchebag scarves, but there was something inside of you that was bright and clean. I would have called you pack, maybe_. Instead he drives his claws into Jackson's sternum and feels his lungs deflate around them.

He doesn't even know how to talk about what happens next. It's like there's two versions of him watching it: the one whose voice he recognizes as his, that's saying things like _I remember you two, you barely even tolerated each other's presence for long enough to fuck, how is this some kind of epic love for the ages?_ And then there's another him, that's definitely not familiar at all, and it doesn't say anything. It just roots him in place and makes him watch, no looking away, as something miraculous happens. It sends chills down his spine and twists that spot back behind his eyes that makes his throat close up.

Derek watches Jackson rise, slow and resplendent, and for the first time allows himself to think, _I miss my eyes being blue_.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "The War was in Color" by Carbon Leaf, which I know of because of this amazing Captain America fanvid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDgHT-5SdAw. Not listing it as a related work because it's really only related to the title choice? But if you have any interest, check it out. And come cry about it with me.


End file.
